Visual material is everywhere and growing explosively, while our attention stays limited. As a consequence, the ability to critically observe, analyze, and understand visual material efficiently becomes ever more essential. Making sense of structure and evolution of form and meaning is crucial for success in art, art history, animation, design, games, marketing, science, and social media. Addressing this need, the Visual Sample and Remix course provides participants with a cognitive and practical toolkit that combines methods ranging from traditional art history to cutting-edge approaches in a variety of disciplines. We will look into materials ranging from ancient art and architecture, across movies, games, and consumer products, to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Typical course activities include a variety of qualitative, quantitative, and creative methods, iterating weekly and feeding into a common product that can be presented to a wider audience. Our goal in class is a productive multidisciplinary discussion of weekly results.

This course is relevant, because "Everything is a Remix" => http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

Required Texts:

Google Image Search and selected readings provided by the instructor

Course Requirements/Evaluation Criteria:

The course is open to all graduate students, and does not require any previous technical knowledge. The practical tutorials and homework will be adjusted to fit student's backgrounds and interests, from "never done quantification and visualization" to advanced "data scientist".